Thursday, November 20, 2008

Women's ChamberEight female photographers who have passion to share their stories about the city and the individuals within.A story when the AREA transform to be an ARENA. A story told in the "Women’s Chamber”.

Exhibition Guide BookContains general information about the whole of JB ’09 Programs, including schedule, location, and activities in Opening Ceremony, Artist Talks, Seminars, Workshops, and Artist Gatherings. This book will also include location map, brief information about JB ’09 artists, and other exhibition activities at the same time in other galleries in Jakarta.Language : IndonesianDesigner : Irwan Ahmett (Ahmett Salina)Edition : 3.000 copiesDistribution : will be distributed for free.

Exhibition CatalogueThis catalogue will be published internationally as an anthology of writings on contemporary arts in Southeast Asia and the works exhibited in JB ’09. The contributors are fine arts experts from Southeast Asia. 1. DR. Thomas BerghuisA Netherlands born curator, critics, and fine art lecturer who now resides in Australia. He will analyze the phenomenon of artists' mobility in Southeast Asia and art practices resulted from residency programs and artists exchange.2. Prof. Patrick D. FloresA Curator, critic, and arts lecturer from Philippines. Will review the history of contemporary arts in Southeast Asia. 3. Adeline OoiCurator and critic from Malaysia. Will analyze the trend and current issues in the works of young artists from Southeast Asia. 4. Enin SupriyantoCurator and critic from Indonesia. Will review the latest development of arts infrastructure in Southeast Asia. 5. Agung HujatnikajennongCurator for JB ’09 and critic from Indonesia. Will write about the curatorial theme of JB ’09, Fluid Zone, and the works in exhibition.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

JB 09 will begin by re-introducing what ARENA actually means; opened with a set of exhibitions and simple activities to raise the people’s awareness about what is going on in the society. This is because the society themselves often do not realize that their rights have been taken away—which can be in the form of personal views that are disturbed by the billboards on streets, or unasked-for advertisement messages on our mobile phones.

Public playgrounds, with the encircling iron fences for cleanliness reasons, turn into empty grounds, which are then considered to have no practical functions and finally demolished as the managers consider them to be a burden. Shopping centers, equipped with children’s amusement parks, were originally meant to facilitate the public to fulfill their household needs, but they have turned into consumptive areas, dominating family’s lives with financial demands.

The forms of exhibition in this phase are “one-sided”, presenting relatively classic murals, talk shows, and the likes. These series of early activities will try to raise our awareness about current issues.

2. Pesta Sastra Jakarta (Jakarta Literary Festival)‘Sastra di Ruang Kota’ (Literature in City’s space)Placing literary works that relate to city’s space or memories in the form of public-art media (stickers, graffiti, posters, etc.)The placing/distribution of these public art works will depend on the contents or messages of related works.Hopefully this activity can help introduce literary works and ideas/memory about the city space to a wider public so that these works and ideas can he better appreciated in other forms.Participants : Literary persons and public space artistsVenue : Taman Menteng,Jl. Hos Cokroaminoto, Menteng, JakartaDate : 10 January 2009

4. Gelar Koreografi Kota/GKK (City’s Choreography Festival)GKK will be an annual program. Beginning in 2008, this event consists of performances by 4 choreographers (the creation process of each artist will be supported by a team that gives input on the musical, fine arts, and choreography aspects, containing urban themes) and Street Dance Competition for public. The venue is to be decided later (indoor/outdoor), but will use the lanes used in Jakarta Biennale ‘09.Kencan Tari (Dance Workshop)Kencan Tari comprises workshop the role of drama in choreography, as an approach to interfere in to the choreography. There will be 8 to 18 choreographers that will be introduced by this approach. These choreographers will work based on the theme ‘urban’. Their proposal will be selected. The selected dance will perform in “The City Choreography Show” on February 2009. Date : 24 – 30 November 2009 Instructor : Tang Fu Kuen (Singapore)Target of participant : Invitation (participants of Kencan Tari 2007)II. Fringe Events

Photo ExhibitionA photo exhibition on problems in modern city space of Southeast Asia and its connection with the community’s daily lives.

This program consists of a series of workshops and exhibitions that involve many cross-discipline practitioners to review the context of the contemporary spaces in Jakarta and to create new spaces for the public. This entails not only new spaces in its physical term, but also spaces for ideas that relate to many things which might affect the city’s development, such as the technology, economy, politics, history, and the public. The documentation of the project and workshop’s artifacts (outdoor billboards and on-site specific projects) will be displayed in the Fluid Zone section.

This zone focuses on the creation of spaces that facilitate and mediate new ideas in physical and mental terms, to create encounters and public spaces, so that the art, artists, and the public can interact and appreciate one another.

Artworks existing in a certain public space with the special characteristic of the site—spatially, socially, historically, publicly, and politically—become the most important elements. Works in the public space interact directly with unselected audiences: the audience can interact with the works and appreciate them without any distance. The public turns into active participants, becoming neither distant nor passive.

The society as the art public, which naturally should be the most important focus here, has inadequate access to enjoy and appreciate art. The lack of information and publication about art has made art activities or art discourses fail to become a far-reaching discourse in the society. Therefore, it makes sense to say that there is a need to have a structure in which the society does not only become the “target” of art, but, more importantly, they can be the subject of art. Also, there is the need of a new structure in which the public can engage with art, directly and indirectly, and become the subject of the art process.

Art activities that are based on problems in the community and urban milieu in Jakarta become an important thing to be used as a starting point to create a new art public that have never been touched by art before—for example the students, youth, workers, and the society in general. More popular avenues should also be used, for example by employing youth-segmented radio and internet. By maintaining and developing the new public, hopefully art can be better appreciated and become a far-reaching cultural discourse.

Art and technology and their relation and impact in society will be the focus of discussion in all activities. We bring out this focus of discussion because the development of technology in these years has been affecting our point of view in seeing “the reality”. Audio-visual media offers us new realities and “truth” that are increasingly more attractive and impressive. Furthermore, this leads to a new reality that can change the social condition. Other themes that we will present are: the phenomenon of community radio and television, the development of computers and games technology, and the virtual reality.

Series of exhibition, the workshop emphasizes on the effort to create new creativity rooms, by artists, community, or collaboration of both, in which the artists play the role as the guides that control the media.

Jakarta 32°Showcase ProgramExhibition of students’ and young artists’ works of art who have been presented in the Jakarta 32° biennales (2004, 2006, 2008), organized by 'ruangrupa', in the form of presentation in public spaces.Project Venue : Atrium Senayan City,Jln. Asia Africa Lot. 19, JakartaDate : 1 – 7 February 2009

[Fluid] ZoneInternational Fine Art Exhibition

Started from the town, to the district, and the country. Should the two previous stages focused on works regarding town, this stage would be wider.

At a glance one will realize that the title ‘ARENA’ contains many possibilities of clashes, even conflicts, which can lead to a deadly battlefield if we don’t handle it well. Of course nobody expects such things to happen.

In this phase, our curator Agung Hujatnikajennong tells us again that actually the overlapping processes in various cultures and interests have taken place since a long time ago in the city, country, and geopolitical area where we live, especially after the concepts of “nation-state” and modern cities were applied by post-colonial society. The word ‘Fluid’, which has the negative meaning of being weak when one culture occupies another, yet it positively has the meaning of having the ability to absorb various culture that form a synthesize culture at each country in this region.

In the current time frame, the curator presents two approaches in the theme of the Fluid Zone. This exhibition consists of two sections, i.e. Traffic and On the Map. “On the Map” section will present Southeast Asian young artists whose reputations have been nationally and internationally acknowledged. This section will exhibit art works that represent contemporary problems that the Southeast Asia communities face nowadays, particularly the problems of cities, identities, geopolitical area, and room to maneuver.

The “Traffic” section will present international artists who had been resident artists or visiting artists to the Southeast Asian countries, whose works represent specific viewpoints on the Southeast Asian cultures and societies. This exhibition, basically, wants to invite us to think critically and creatively, and furthermore serves as a warning and perhaps provides answers to existing problems.

Jakarta, a city that covers an area of 661 square kilometers with 11.5 million inhabitants, continues to develop rapidly as a very crowded urban city. Like other urban cities, Jakarta also suffers from the loss of its social functions, which in this case is about the loss of the potentials of its citizens as social creatures. This happens due to various but interconnecting reasons, as well as to other factors such as the economic and political conditions.The city’s spatial development has been focusing more on the economical and physical aspects rather than on the social or individual aspects. The individuals in the city’s structure are seen more as the object of the system. With all the flaws in the urban system, individuals in the society are currently in a battlefield to fight for space, both the economic and the physical space.Everything has been set aside to gain economic growth, without adequate attention toward the cultural aspects. This leads to the lack of public and cultural spaces where the society can identify themselves as social creatures, instead of as machines or alienated human beings. It is a difficult thing for us to secure a certain space that can serve as the place to mediate cultural discourses. All aspects of urban life have been dominated by the industrial, commercial spaces, and obviously by authority-dominated spaces. Jakarta Biennale 2009 (JB 09), as an extensive celebration of art, will serve as an attempt to turn art into a reform strategy, engaging the urban subjects, enabling the creative, reflective, and critical ideas to give rise to new spaces that can be more inspiring, participative, and tolerant.

About Me

The Jakarta Biennale is an art exhibition held every two years in Jakarta, Indonesia. It was titled before as the Indonesian Painting Grand Exhibition, held since 1968. In 1982, the title of Fine Art Biennale was introduced.
The Biennale is held as a responsibility sign of the artists to the society and is aim for the enhancement of appreciation toward art.
Jakarta Biennale is organized by The Jakarta Art Council and The Governor of Jakarta as the patron. Jakarta Biennale 09 is the first of its international character that invites outstanding artists from abroad.